


Liminality

by Themes_of_November



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Finn is a jedi too, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Slash, Redemption, Rey is a Jedi, for now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 16:42:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6384346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Themes_of_November/pseuds/Themes_of_November
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After killing Snoke and returning to his Mother, Kylo Ren tries to adjust to life at the Resistance Base.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liminality

**Author's Note:**

> Liminality:  
> In anthropology, liminality is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the ritual is complete. During a ritual's liminal stage, participants "stand at the threshold" between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the ritual establishes.

The war is not yet over. The Resistance needs as many resources as it can muster and Rey and Finn are only two Jedi apprentices against the entire First Order. He needs to pull his weight around here and contribute as much as he can. He may have redeemed himself in the eyes of his mother and uncle by killing Snoke but the death of the Sith is just one toppled piece in this struggle. His mind, however, is fixed on other things.

Things like the guilt that crashes on him like a Star Destroyer, too vast to comprehend or strike against. Things like his mother's eyes that look at him with so much sadness, he wants to twist the arrow of time within his fist and undo all actions that led to this pain, unmake himself too if it would but help. Things like the worried way Rey and Finn meet him, uncertainty embedded in the Force as they try to censor their thoughts around him but he knows, he knows. Things like the whispers of the Base that follow him like shadows follow light, anger wilted still with fear, a more corporal form than those that Snoke filled his mind with in childhood.

Things like a certain X-Wing Commander who hovers in his periphery, circling him the way he circles enemy ships in his missions that he runs more and more of these days, target locked and primed to strike.

It takes the pilot a while to get enough downtime to do more than acknowledge his presence with a glare but the ice is broken three weeks into his return to the Base. He walks up to him when Kylo is eating alone in the cafeteria and Kylo can taste the fury rolling off of him. Dameron punches him in the mouth and Kylo is not entirely surprised. He has been expecting something along those lines since the moment he stepped foot on the Base. No one has dared so far and he knows that is not for lack of animosity but because they're still wary of him. Dameron, not so much.

'This is for torturing me.' He says as his fist connects with Kylo's lip, splitting the flesh beneath and sending jarring vibrations throughout his teeth.  
Kylo ends up biting the inside of his cheek. Hard. He gingerly touches a finger to his mouth and it comes back bloody.  
'Fair enough.' He says as he rubs the blood off his fingers.  
It was bound to happen anyway and it is not like he can blame the pilot. His mouth feels numb, jaw hanging loose as he tries to take measure of the pain and that is when Dameron sucker punches him hard enough to send him sprawling to the floor.  
'And this is for the General.'

He may not have Kylo's height but he has the build of a soldier and a mean right hook to boot. He doesn't even bother checking up on him, just turns his feet and leaves. Kylo spits up blood and wonders how many more punches are coming his way. He knows he deserves them, deserves every single one of them, and he doesn't try to fight back.

The look in his mother's eye when he goes back to their house that night is indecipherable. When she speaks, there is worry in her voice and he can feel her sadness through the Force. Kylo immediately regrets coming in to the house like this, lip split and bruised and a swelling on the side of his jaw where Dameron's knuckles have broken skin. Perhaps he should have tried to sneak in while she was sleeping. He dodges the questions she asks and she gives up with a sigh but not before she has wrapped him in her arms. He feels her tears against his skin and his chest clenches in pain and then he is crying too. He clings to her like a child and it occurs to him that he is her child, will always be her child regardless of how old he gets or what he does. He buries his head in her chest and cries harder, letting her presence soothe the gaping chasm in his soul.

He looks at his face in the mirror the next day and regrets it. He looks worse than the night before. There are twin bruises blooming on his face, splotchy black and blue with some red thrown in, stark against his pale skin. The one near his lips covers half his chin. The one on his cheek is fairly swollen, partially closing his left eye. He dabs some bacta on his face and hopes to escape unnoticed from the house, not wanting his mother to see him like this: beaten, bruised and broken and too far gone to bother fighting back.

Alas that is not meant to be. Dameron is at their house, standing like a soldier in the living room while his mother looks up at him in reprimand. Kylo tries to sneak out but his mother's eyes meet his and he goes to stand next to her. He keeps his head down though, letting his long hair obscure his face and hazards a glance at the pilot.

Dameron's eyes widen slightly as he takes in his face before the pilot grits his teeth and composes his face. Kylo doesn't know why that makes him shiver. Leia looks between them before asking Dameron to apologise to him and they protest at the same time. Kylo flushes and looks away.

'I am sorry,' Dameron says finally, looking his mother in the eye and for a while Kylo is taken aback, 'for the pain my actions have caused you.' He continues and Kylo feels sucker punched all over again. 'You know I can't lie, not to you. And I do not regret my actions. I'm sorry. I will accept any punishment you see fit.'

There is an earnestness in his voice that he can sense and he knows his mother can too. There is indeed no lie in Dameron's words and it grates at him. He doesn't know what he expected. Certainly not an apology. Dameron is too proud for that. But he thought, hoped maybe, that Dameron would, what, warm up to him? Like him?

Leia sighs, raising a hand to rub at her temple. Kylo thinks she will ask Dameron to leave now and it shocks him when she turns and asks him to leave instead. He blinks a few times, feet stuck to the rug before nodding hastily and leaving. He turns to close the door behind him and catches Dameron move closer to his mother. He snaps the door shut and walks away.

Dameron lost his mother - Shara Bey, the name rises to the fore of his mind - when he was eight. He knows this because he was there, a few months short of being six. He stood at his mother's side as she gave a toast in her memory. He sneaked out later to find the dark haired boy underneath the Force Sensitive tree in the yard and sat with him, held him as he cried.

The forgiveness of his family, his mother and to an extent his uncle is easy to understand, bonds of blood, written into their shared lineage, even though it surprises him at being so readily given. He had hungered for it with all that was left of his soul but not once did he expect to find it. That would have been too close to hope and he knew how terrible hope was, how easily it could twist the mind to madness.

The forgiveness of Finn and Rey is not bound by blood ties but something deeper. They have felt the siren call of the Dark, its rumble vibrating deep in their bones. There is no peace, the Dark says, only passion. The Force shall free you. They know it, they have tasted its thrill on their tongues, known its seduction in their minds and their forgiveness is born out of an understanding, a covenant never to be spoken of but powerful enough to bind.

With Dameron he is unmoored, cast adrift amongst an avalanche of strange emotions that rise unbidden in his mind, too fluid to suffocate but too dense to escape. He is not exactly a stranger but he only knew the boy. The man he has only known strapped to a table, just another means to an end. It is this oddity, this strange liminality between being strangers and being familiars, that tugs at him and refuses to yield. He knows not what he is looking for and that unnerves him. Is it forgiveness that he wants? And if he does, then why?

He makes his way to the cafeteria, sensing Rey and Finn's presence there. Perhaps food will help or a strong cup of caf. It is a strange addiction pushed onto him by an overeager Finn while Rey had laughed at his side clutching her own mug of caf. He looks forward to the restless high, the shake in his fingers when he knows he has had too much and can feel his heart beat a staccato against his ribs and he knows that he is alive. It is better than the numbness that coils around him.

His feet have carried him almost to the door before he starts sensing them. The thoughts of those around him have always been venomous but now they are tinged with something else. He focuses on the nearest ones and whispers of them unfurl in his mind.

... _what happened..._  
_...beaten..._  
_...told me last night..._

And another that brings a surge in his veins, like caf but better somehow.

_...my turn..._

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be light hearted fluff but my brain decided now was the time to return to my angsty fanfic roots so this happened.


End file.
